


Light Up

by Bladestar123



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25605676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bladestar123/pseuds/Bladestar123
Summary: When Los Angeles is rocked by a chain of ritualistic murders that grow increasingly depraved, a disgraced detective gambles his reputation and sanity on solving the case. But what difference can a single man make, when he shines a light on things that should have stayed in the dark?A noir stylized supernatural mystery set in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

Snow fell, for the first time in 30 years, so finely it crumbled in the wind.  
  
Through the harsh chill and damp, children ran past. They were lined up, and where one stepped, the others followed; what remained of the snow had formed a layer so thin on the ground that even a single step melted it away to nothing. The parents were gone, vanished behind a glacial stage curtain that trembled in the gust of their passage. Even a single slip, and the entire fragile edifice would crumble, the children would collapse in anger or laughter and the parents would run in to hold their precious babies, spin them around and kiss their cheeks. But there was a precious few moments before that, that belonged to the children alone, some silent thing that only they could see with forgotten eyes.  
  
Past the children, Rooke’s light footsteps carried him through the park. High cheekbones and sunken temples cast a churlish bent to his face, where it came together over a burning stub that rose and fell rhythmically between his teeth. At a few years before 30, he’d ended up the sort of man who walked the world like a tourist.  
  
He moved slowly. The nub cooled with a sharp _hiss_ as the wind gusted, and he flicked it away. The sudden sourness on his librarian’s face would have disturbed the children, who could sense authority at thirty paces they say, but he stepped quickly away into the snow with murder on his mind and they were none the wiser. The snow continued to drift as he walked, deeper and deeper into the park, heading for the ring of trees that outlined the limits of private property.  
  
A phone rang, rustling his coat and startling several birds from their nests.  
  
“Yes?” His voice was hoarse from the cold, and raspy from an active life.  
  
“ _Mr. Rooke?_ ” The voice on the other end was gruff. “ _Are you heading to the Baxter home, currently?_ ”  
  
“I was on the way. I was told that I could view the scene before-”  
  
“ _Yes._ ” The voice said. “ _Excellent. Someone will be waiting for you at the front, please present yourself with ID to get past the cordon._ ”  
  
“I’ll be arriving from the back, actually.”  
  
The voice hesitated. “ _Alright, the back then. We’ll see you there._ ” The line clicked off.  
  
Rooke then moved more quickly. He’d stepped further from the main path and into the thin forest surround where he hurried through the trees, a graceless haste to his stride as branches snagged his clothes and knotted his hair. It was a mischievous sort of haste, the kind of duckwalking stride that belies true urgency, instead rooted entirely in the desire to show someone up.  
  
The copse eventually ended, and he slowed, panting, out into a backyard bound up entirely in police lights. A large wooden fence sat in picket row beneath dull windows and a snarling planter’s box running the length of the back wall. It hummed, trembling faintly from the activity contained within, heat palpable even from the distance Rooke stood at. A man at the back gate done up in blue blinked as Rooke emerged, eyes snapping to Rooke with easy suspicion. Rooke strode over, badge at hand, and though traces of suspicion remained he offered Rooke the door.  
  
The inside was different, where he stepped from the calm chill of wonderland into the furious heat of a hive. The backyard was a mess, tape and paperwork strewn about as forensics rushed about. The buzz of chatter and radio static was immediately dominant, the press of so many bodies working in a small family home sweltering. There was no wonder in their eyes, only a dull certainty.  
  
A short man waited for Rooke there, to his mild disappointment, by the back screen door. He was a man with a grim mien about him, the lines on his face were tight and his frown stone. His hair was cropped short, but thin red lines stood stark on his scalp. He offered no more than a cursory handshake as Rooke approached quickly. Rooke took it, the men trading silent nods. “Rooke. Pleasure.” Rooke said, breath gusting.  
  
“Mark.” The man said. “You’re the Detective?”  
  
Rooke nodded.  
  
“Then you’ll need to see it first,” The officer murmured softly. “Before any further conversation. That will be important, I think.” He rubbed his hands nervously on his pants, watery eyes glazed.  
  
Rooke politely gestured onwards. “Best get out of the snow then.”  
  
The man muttered his agreement, marking the cross on his chest. “Bad luck. This kind of bloodshed on a white night is a bad sign.” He cast one last look at the falling snow and turned and moved into the home, Rooke following closely behind. Unconsciously, his hand went up to mimic the gesture, before he diverted it to caress the thin scratches opened on his cheeks ruefully.  
  
The home they stepped inside was richly decorated, though not all of it had been unwrapped from dust cloths. The hardwood creaked softly as they moved, shifting slightly underfoot with dips and hollows, creaking audibly as they moved past the kitchen. Three officers stood there, gossiping softly, only going silent as they spotted Rooke moving past. He ducked his head a bit, feeling the back of his neck flush. The staircase was a short one, leading into a hallway that immediately twisted at sharp angles.  
  
Immediately, they pressed themselves against a wall. White-clad figures pushed past, one more on a stretcher held between them, very still under the cloth blanket. Rooke pushed himself deeper into the small gap and watched their backs as they slowly maneuvered the stretcher down the long stairs, before turning his head back to where they’d come from. Doors were tucked away in the dark here, and paintings coated the surfaces between. Rooke recognized a landscape or two from the view out the door.  
The bedroom door was last, slightly ajar where it had been pulled open at the end of the hallway, flanked by a surly officer and a swathe of tape. The two pulled away from the wall eventually, each chewing their thoughts as they approached.  
  
His guide, a police sergeant by patch, took a moment to greet the watchman familiarly as Rooke slowly steeled himself. The chatter went on as Mark flipped his badge open and shut like a metronome, the look in his eyes receding like the horizon until it grew so distant you couldn’t hope to make out a single thought. The officer beside him waved them through. The sergeant paused as Rooke stepped up beside them.  
  
“I asked him if he wanted to join us - he refused. Quite brusquely to boot.” Mark confided blithely as they pushed the door open. “Not that I blame him.” He dabbed expressionlessly at his forehead.  
  
Rooke heard not a word, nor caught his expression.  
  
The expression stretched upon Annabeth Baxter’s face drew the eye, as they stepped slowly into the room. It hung, as wide as a banner and nailed to the wall in seven points, facing them as they entered. Intoxication and despair twisted her lovely porcelain features into a grotesque death mask. It was the centerpiece of an intricate affair of plastic and gore as the workers buzzed and chittered about.  
  
A _drip_ of blood fell to the floor, and even the muttered conversation halted for it.  
  
Mark looked on expressionlessly. He’d been the homicide sergeant who’d been called to investigate, he explained quietly as Rooke continued to observe silently.  
  
“When’d you realize Annabeth wasn’t in here?” Rooke asked.  
  
“Around the time we finished cataloguing the parts.” Mark gestured to the floor. Annabeth’s limbs lay untouched, dead and still with not a mark upon them. The examiner was still there, quietly avoiding their eyes as she continued to wordlessly catalogue the remains.  
  
“The rest of the family was piled on top, like kindling. We couldn’t exactly sort through it blindly, so it took a bit.”  
  
“Haunting stuff.” Rooke muttered, crouching down and squinting as the facemask seemed to stare back. Mark nodded slightly, turning as someone entered the room closely behind them. A large black man stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind him as everyone briefly turned to the sound before turning away once more. He ran a nervous hand through thick black curls as he stepped into the room.  
  
“Booker.” Mark greeted gently. The black man moved up to them, his eyes rimmed with red, and offered them both a polite nod of the head. “Mark.” He greeted, rum voice exhausted. ”The coroner’s outside with the...er-”  
  
“Yes.” Mark said, briefly squeezing his eyes shut. “I know.”  
  
Booker nodded, turning to Rooke who stood and offered his hand. “Rooke.” he said, wincing at the man’s grip. Booker shook his head. “Pleasure. Lamonte Booker.” He squeezed for a second longer before turning to Mark, who quirked an eyebrow at the dark expression on Booker’s face.  
  
They struck up a conversation with the medic, a conversation Rooke was only half-listening to as he tried to take as much detail as he could. The bodies had been pulled apart and covered with white cloth, only the limbs having been uncovered during the course of investigation. One more body had been here, but had been already transferred to the morgue. They had been piled up carelessly, almost discarded, but Annabeth had been given something resembling care to the violence inflicted on her.  
  
Rooke’s phone buzzed loudly, and he cursed under his breath as he struggled to pull it out of his pants, pausing for a long moment to read the screen before slowly tucking it away.  
  
The medic, broken from her reverie, visibly hesitated, words on her lips, but shook her head eventually. She muttered to Mark, “Too soon to tell, and I shouldn’t be speculating.”  
  
Rooke opened his mouth, question ready, but she turned those dark eyes on them and Rooke slowly shut his jaw soberly. “I’ll get you what we can as soon as possible.”  
  
They left, by ones, after that. Mark the first, then Booker with Rooke beside as the ME returned to her gruesome work.  
  
“Didn’t feel right, making talk here.” Booker said quietly after a bit. Rooke turned curiously back to the door, where through the crack the figure of the laboring ME was barely visible. “Ex-military?” He asked curiously. “She manhandled those bodies pretty well.”  
  
“Maybe. Best not to ask that sort of thing.” Mark rubbed an eye with the back of one hand. “Alright, Booker, could you-”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well alright then.” Mark grimaced. “I appreciate the help.”  
  
“You do love to ask.” The taciturn man shrugged.  
  
“Booker’s the resident comedian.” Mark whispered to Rooke drily. Rooke felt a brow raise.  
  
Booker, not batting an eye, turned and leaned against a wall, stretching out a bit and relaxing. He looked unlikely to move to Mark’s visible disgust, who simply shrugged helplessly, and went to shut the door firmly behind them.  
  
Rooke had a premonition, suddenly.  
  
“Now,” Mark said quietly, standing beside him, and running his hands down his pants once more. “I want you to explain to me how you found Ms. Baxter again, if you wouldn’t mind. Take your time.”

* * *

Rooke woke up four inches from a stain he couldn’t hope to identify, and wondered why it smelled more appetizing than his morning coffee.  
  
Then, he wondered why he was on the floor at all. The bone-cracking yawn answered that, and he stretched out and curled up on the cold floor.  
  
He’d evidently made it home at some point. That was nice. Mildew and stains left a pall over his cheap apartment, where it was hung with cheap venetian blinds and fading wallpaper. The sun poured through the gaps. His long limbs were pale in the bars of light, folded like spider legs under his torso where they clung to the cheap carpeting and attempted to bury themselves deeper into the warmth. They cramped as he shifted them.  
  
He made it to the bedroom eventually, rising on numbed limbs. Here, the smell of burnt frankincense pooled on the carpet, soaked into the walls like a stain. It soothed his mind, like stepping into his grandmother’s home once more. He could hear her wooden tenor, like a fine sandpaper to his anxiety. Here, his limbs finally unclenched, leaving behind a cold exhaustion as his shoulders slumped, and he began moving quickly.  
  
10 minutes and he was out the door, cursing the world, taxpayers, and every damn man-jack that went to bed self-satisfied.  
  
The second day dawned, overcast and slightly chilly.  
  
The drive to the Baxter home was a quick one, and it was only a short walk from where he parked around the corner.  
  
The hive had been sedated, long before he’d arrived, the last workers sluggish as they slowly backed off reluctantly. The last remnants of homicide’s less than fruitful investigation was the crime scene tape that already showed fingerprints running along the sides. Rooke slowly chewed his bagel as he stepped over it, and walked into the home. The ME’s remained, as well as a few patrol officers that aborted salutes as they caught sight of him.  
  
There was only a single unmarked path, with plenty of leftover tape and evidence bags haphazardly left to either side. Rooke walked slowly past them to a room he’d found earlier, one he’d found enough space in to hang a corkboard and stretch out a roll of twine.  
  
He began with a name. Things often started with names. Person, place or thing, it always started with something to identify.  
  
_Annabeth Baxter_ went on top of the corkboard, on a little yellow post-it he nailed down with a bright red pin.

* * *

_“Report’s in from the Coats.” Booker said tonelessly. “Initial reporting is definitive intent to harm or kill, probable psychosis expected in the assailant; I got the profilers started on it.” He turned slightly to the ME, who paused in her work to turn to them. She cleared her throat, and said “Yeah, the cuts are pretty amateur though.” She picked up her forceps, lifting a ragged cut of skin. “The knifework is haphazard, but there’s definite intent to it. Some of these cuts were post-exsanguination too, and judging by the state of the blood and cell damage, likely some time after the attack.” She used her gloved hands to gently impress a thumb into one of the dismembered limbs. Rooke found himself morbidly curious, leaning in as she manipulated the stump to reveal the cut of bone. “Sawed at, with no ragged lines. They took their time.” She said softly, tracing it, “Lines up with torture. Unpracticed. Crime of passion is my estimate, if this was the serial killer they’d get the broad strokes right, then start losing it once the blood flows.”  
  
Her eyes were dark. Rooke chose not to respond.  
_

* * *

_Thomas Vargas_ went below her, followed by _Edmund Waller_.  
  
_Dead_ went on the board, and then the twine was unspooled, winding around the pins with a soft rasp.

* * *

_Rooke felt his shoulders tighten, before he forced himself to relax. “She hired me.” He said. “I’m a private detective these days, I’m in the yellow pages, the internet, whatever.”  
  
“She’s in the hospital.” Booker said thoughtfully. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it would be a real pain in the ass to do it herself, rather than having someone else contact you for her.”  
  
“It was her.” Rooke said. “I met her. The scene explains a lot about why she...well, about her circumstances.”  
  
“I believe you.” Mark said. “And I appreciate you letting us know where she was hospitalized. Why she’s refusing police protection, however, is slightly suspect.”  
  
Rooke kept his mouth shut._  
  
_Mark twisted his head slightly to the side, the sandy-haired man’s features warping with some buried emotion. “Detective Rooke. I presume you read the papers on this case.” He spoke softly now, the trembling undertones of emotion almost entirely hidden.  
  
“A reported third body.” Rooke said, voice even quieter than Mark’s. “First two were a man in his eighties living with his children, and a teenager in a trainyard. All given similar...”  
  
“Treatment.” Booker provided helpfully in his steady baritone, eyes still shut. Rooke rather felt like punching the man as he shifted himself to get more comfortable against the wall.  
  
“...yeah.” He grimaced. “Treatment. Gradual escalation of violence. All three unsolved. No leads. No witnesses. No signature. Uncertain connection. The first two were only found a week after they were determined to have died.”_

* * *

Thomas and Edmund were dead, attacked with similar M.O. and with nearly similar results. But no one could agree that it was a serial murder - BAU thought it lacked the marks of a real serial killer at the time. He swallowed the bagel, and drew a long line of twine to a pin he stuck rather strongly into _Didn’t kill?_ , drawing it to the _Serial Killer?_ he placed in the center of the board.

* * *

_No leads, and I’ve been told to help a private detective investigate the same case.” Mark said flatly. “A disgraced officer to boot, who met the victim before any officer, after which she refused all police aid save for our investigation. You understand how this looks?”  
  
Rooke shrugged, shifting a little. “I wouldn’t have chosen to do it this way if I could.”  
  
“Then give me a reason not to make your life hell.”  
  
Rooke opened his mouth. Mark didn’t like the answer._  
  


* * *

  
Rooke lay still, on the floor of the Baxter home. The tip of his nose quivered a little in the air conditioning, yet still he lay and waited. He certainly seemed to be in no hurry; he’d been there for the whole day, rising only to scribble more notes onto his corkboard and to pace in manic bursts of energy across the room.  
  
Now, at least, all lay calm. Moonlight ran thick in shafts through the halls, pooling in the wide hallways and running down the floorboards. There were more windows than at first glance; thin shutters had been opened near the roof, all down the main hallways, spotlighting the fine paintings placed opposite some of the rooms. Rooke had clapped eyes on one, and found himself laying down as he contemplated them.  
  
He’d concluded, not an hour or two ago, that the paintings had likely been done by the Missus herself. Anne Baxter, while no prodigious talent, had an eye for blocky lines. The room he was in was the one she’d spent most of her time in, by all estimation; an easel sat offset from Rooke, slightly listing and careworn, a set of paints and brushes not far past beside a sink choked by a lifetime’s passion. Laying here, he could almost see her move about, scrapes where she’d dragged her feet, splatters where her eagerness took hold, holes where she’d admired her art, dust where she’d abandoned her most unremarkable efforts.  
  
And still, what remained was enthralling. So much so, that only the framing drew distinction between deliberate art and impressionist abstraction. As it was, if one grew familiar enough with the room certain lines grew familiar.  
  
It was unfortunate, but he had no one to bounce off of, to prevent the stagnation from setting in. Homicide had rightfully taken his presented work on the case with suspicion and anger. _Politics_ , Mark had spat at an unseen figure far to the west, and while Booker had offered Rooke a conciliatory hand, he was no less perturbed.  
  
Rooke slowly rose to his feet, dusting himself off and checking the time.  
  
_22:17:28_  
  
Nodding to himself, he slowly headed to the door, casting one look back at his corkboard before swinging it open and passing through on the way to his ride. His Corolla sat low on the street, one long scrape down the side jamming the passenger door shut. He had to work the driver’s side a bit before it acquiesced, and he slid inside, grimacing at the sticky leather. He couldn’t say why he hadn’t replaced it, only that he thought fondest of it while he wasn’t inside.  
  
He hit the radio absently, flipped it on and it was already on his favorite channel - the variety news channel. A man came on and hit the murder report on a clean A-flat, and Rooke resisted the urge to applaud. On impulse, he looked out the window, to the street across from the Baxter home. A man stood there, in a pale suit, ear cocked like he was listening too. The performer on the radio started singing the weather report, and the man tapped his white loafers in time. A woman sat beside him, on the curb, one heel dangling off her feet. The two seemed to notice his look, turning to him with nearly identical looks of boredom. The woman in particular looked piqued by Rooke’s choice in radio station. The man in the suit on the other hand raised a brow, tapping the face of the plated watch he wore on the inside of his wrist. Rooke reflexively looked down, and found himself nodding with the assessment; it was indeed quite late.  
  
The man seemed satisfied by the nod Rooke offered back, and turned away, helping his lady friend to her feet and stepping into the house behind them.  
  
Shame; the nosy sort tended to make wonderful witnesses. Unreliable, yes. But useful.  
  
His hand went for the window knob as he switched to drive and paused; he’d never rolled it down. He shook his head, staring after them as he pulled out.  
  
Traffic was low this time of night. The city came alive the farther he went, light blossoming around as traffic began to burgeon and pedestrians returned to their antsy ways.  
  
The lights were off in his apartment complex by the time he arrived, the families occupying the places next to his long asleep. He nearly stumbled going up the concrete stairs more than a few times, and by the time he’d added a few new key scars to his doorknob his eyes were already drawing closed.  
  
He barely made it inside.


	2. Chapter 2

_Water exploded around him, the torrential rush of bubbles and water rushing upwards deafening as he felt himself sink deeper._

_Rooke opened his eyes, but the sting of salt forced them shut once more. He peeled them open once more, and this time they held._

_Pressure. He was cocooned in it. It weighed on his chest and hugged his form, slowly bending him into the droplet-esque shape he’d assumed as he sank, spinefirst. The water felt solid, as though he were sliding down a funnel, forced tighter and tighter together. His knees were drilling into his cheekbones._

_The softness of his eyes began to warp. He felt it distantly, like cotton being stuffed back into his skull. The weight was flattening his face, equitably crushing him into a solid mass, tearing his hair at the roots and forcing his jaw loose._

_A bubble, at last, rolled out of his mouth like a marble, peeling his lips apart and slipping free. He watched it float up through his hazy vision, until it was indistinguishable from the watery ceiling high above._

_His back struck the bottom hard, so violently it shocked him into thrashing until his head struck the floor as well._

_The unexpected pain stilled him, and a few more bubbles escaped in a rush. He forced his lips shut, hands slowly coming up to hold everything closed, and slowly allowed the stars to fade._

_The sound went first. The rush was gone, and now all sound was dull, balanced all wrong. Too much bass. Then the colors faded in. His vision settled to a pinhole view._

_The water was green, muddled. Black bled in around the edges, pouring up from the depths, but for the lingering halo in the middle that continued to illuminate his sky. It flickered black, and a second later the sound arrived. A splash, a rush as some current whipped past him. The black speck, off in the distance, fell in slow motion, engulfed in bubbles. They faded, and he vanished into the water._

_A bubble slipped free again. This time, his arms hadn’t the energy to plug his mouth. A black stillness had seized his mind, as he lay back and watched the sky. His hands slowly slid out, along the hard ground, stretching out._

_Something made contact, curling about his fingers, twisting into his hand. He clenched his hands closed._

_Hands, other hands, held his. The hand to his right was smooth, almost oily and threatened to slip away unless he tightened his grasp. The ones to his left were rough, worn and strong, seizing him in a powerful grip._

_He felt energy stir in him, cut through the lethargy weighing him down, just enough to open his eyes again. He hadn’t realized they were closed._

_He slid his eyes open, and exhaled deeply._

Rooke blinked his eyes open and winced.

He’d forgotten to turn off the light. Damn.

* * *

_...it can be seen as something of a jape, that despite the incredible wealth of Los Angeles itself, the boroughs are some of the most criminally fraught on the western seaboard. It is less that the politicians are in bed with criminal elements, and more that when one peers into a mirror they see the other. The pretense itself has been done away with, proving, in a sense, that opulence truly is freein-_

“What is this?” Rooke muttered. The sheet went on, fastidious in detail. He flipped to the next page, and back, frowning deeper as the words continued on without so much as a friendly diagram to ease his mental burden.

“That, is bad news.” The man to his left grunted. “Bad for you, bad for me, bad for the whole damn city.”

The two men adjusted their seating uncomfortably as the wind rolled through the car's open windows. The breeze cast off the highway was a warm one, carrying the pungent scent of charred rubber and petroleum to the idling dark-green sedan the two men sat in. They continued to recline in their faux-leather seat, seemingly resigned to the feeling of the hairs on their arms slowly burning. 

“That’s nice, but this isn’t what I asked for.”

The driver sighed, turning back to Rooke. 

“You asked for a list of potential suspects?”

“Yea-”

“Here.” The man jerked a thumb out the window. 

Rooke squinted, leaning forwards in his seat. “The civic center?”

“All requisite camera footage, HA notifications, and neighborhood watch tickets for this district and associated CPAB are in that building right there. Good luck getting ahold of them. You want page two, the next Basic Car’s only 5 minutes away.”

Rooke snorted. “Cute.”

“I wasn’t joking, David. You wanted the list the police investigation was going through, this is it.”

Rooke went quiet, staring at the elderly driver, who stared back blankly. He coughed once, sweat beading under a thick thatch of curls like creeks through shrubland

“So.” Rooke said, suppressing emotion. “Everything. Everything and everyone. I suppose that was discussed in the paper as well.”

“Something like that.” He replied, his voice hardened by smoke and a lifetime of drink. He waved at the pages, fingers long hardened to stiff ends, and Rooke noted that he tended to his joints with every off-breath.

He massaged them now. “It’s a treatise, of sorts.” He said. “A report on the status of crime in the boroughs. It’s an interesting read, I find.”

Rooke’s eyes flicked down the page, but obediently flipped through them. “Not telling me anything new though...” He muttered. “These are all mostly theoreticals. Malcolm, this is useless.”

“Ingrate. I never said it was anything new though.” The driver, Malcolm, grunted. “The writer in question is an old friend of mine. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out more about the crime rate and some of the movers and pushers.”

“Verdict?”

“There’s a shitload of legitimate, desperate crime.” Malcolm snapped sourly. “For reasons that are, for the most part, entirely transparent. Paper came out and it was barely even a blip on anyone’s radar. Point is, there’s a lot of goddamn people that _could_ have done this, and you don’t have the resources to requisition and comb through neighborhood watch records. Find a different way.”

Rooke’s face fell, and he straightened out the papers again, combing through them a second time.

 _The ‘criminal elements’ of the boroughs are, for the most part, invisible. They are workers, blue and white collar alike, not_ cholo _. The crime of desperation is an art of distributed management, like hurling a shuttle through a thousand warp threads. With sufficient pressure and a mild touch, they are put in place, threaded among a thousand people they interact with daily. The vast majority of crime is thus passed through a thousand thousand hands, but spearheaded by a mere few hundred-_ ”Fuck!”

“Language!” Malcolm snapped. A second cough forced itself out as he adjusted his suit about his puffin chest, but well-aged formality lent him some dignity. “It’s _a_ kind of lead, David. There are others.”

Rooke worked his jaw, trying to find words. For a few seconds, he considered just hurling the papers aside; he’d already started lifting his hand to do it. But the pages were as blameless as they were useless, and he’d just look like even more of a child. He settled them, flipping to random points and slapping them with his fingers as though proving something. “This thing is _meaningless!_ I can definitely do better. I _need_ a compiled list of suspects, not this _crap_.”

Malcolm rolled his eyes and shook his head dismissively, exactly the kind of reaction that Rooke loathed. “And how’s that gonna get you anywhere. Gonna trim down ten thousand potentials alone?”

“ _Not just anyone_ ’s gonna bother hacking a family apart Malcolm! That list is the _best_ lead!”

“Not for you!” Malcolm snapped back. “The police aren’t gonna share that shit with a civilian, and good luck making your own. You can’t put pressure on anyone and they’re not gonna turn over their records and potential witnesses to a PI. Face it, unless yo-”

Another bout of coughing racked his agitated form. Rooke sighed his frustration, but offered his arm anyway, breathing slower and slower. The driver took it gracefully, leaning on him as his cough grew heavier and shook his thickset frame. Rooke hardly shifted, though by the stoop of his shoulders and the deliberate avoidance of his eyes, discomfort could be inferred. His self-loathing grew to war with his anger. He simply started averting his eyes, until he felt like he could express anything again.

The sound eventually petered off, and the driver slowly allowed his grasp to loosen. An apologetic look crossed the gap, but the passenger’s only response was to straighten his cuffs and nod stiffly. 

Malcolm cleared his throat. Rooke had the feeling he knew what he was thinking. “ _Unless_ , you’re putting the request up on Craigslist, this isn’t a viable avenue for you.” He said gruffly. “I’m sorry David, but between the two of us, we just don’t have the resources or contacts to work this.”

They did. If they pulled out all the stops, if they worked dawn to dusk, night after night, they could do it.

“But you’re retired.” Rooke said softly. And that spoke for itself. Neither man could make eye contact anymore. Shame grew in its place, but he still resented the man for not helping, for not caring more. How could he resent a retired man for settling in his final days? How could he _not_ resent a man who couldn’t use what he had to help people?

The roar of the highway made any silence an easy one, so there the two men sat and allowed the world to wash over them. 

“It’s the same man.” Rooke said lowly. “I’m sure of it.” It was stated as fact. It was meant as bait.

The elder man did not respond. His large head bowed, almost dipping onto his chest.

Rooke opened his mouth to try again.

“Subjectivity.” Malcolm mused. Rooke shut his mouth. “It’s a funny thing. The way you say it, truth becomes lies and you can convince any man a lie is true. Up goes down, the sun sets up, and a monster in the mist is just a man on meth.” He chortled to himself softly. “The damndest thing, isn’t it?”

“I _know_ what I saw back then.” Rooke licked his lips, and realized his mouth was painfully dry. “Malcolm, it was _him_ , I _know_ it. It’s got the smell of that bastard all over it, it’s how I _found_ Annabeth at all!”

“You _think_ you know what you saw back then at all.” The driver snapped, suddenly harsh. “You think you’re the first man to see a shadow and shout Dracula? To draw connections using any _possible_ explanation, to justify a wrong? Hundred, hundred-fifty years ago there would’ve been witch burnings every street from here to Pomona if you shouted loudly enough, and you’d be no more correct then than now.” 

The old man gently rubbed at a swollen wrist. “If there were justice in the world,” he murmured, “I would’ve been the only one let go. You would’ve just been dumped in Special Investigations and we could have all moved on. Instead, you’ve been reduced to begging an old man for a ride and chasing ghosts.”

His passenger shrunk down, shoulders hunching. “A man _died_ Malcolm.” He muttered. “I watched it happen. That wasn’t a goddamn tweaker.”

“A man died, and we know who did it because he confessed.” Malcolm grunted. “Open and shut. The only ones who still care are sitting in this car, and I’m going nowhere fast.”

“So that’s that then.”

“It’s on you, Detective.” Malcolm allowed his chin to dip, eyes fixed on his steering wheel steadfastly. “You’re gonna need to figure this shit out on your own.”

The topmost page of the pile fluttered, a stamped order barely made transparent in the light. He’d memorized every word. David swallowed a little. “Take me to the scene, at least.” His eyes darted to the window at his side, where shadows grew unchecked across the side streets. “Please.”

“Buy a car at some point, eh _Detective_ Rooke?” Malcolm’s wary eyes eased, and tension began to bleed from his frame. “Can’t have heroes going about like caddies. We all have an image to maintain around here.” And there it was, that mantle rippling about his shoulders in a way that made him look two decades younger and a full score pounds trimmer. 

And then it was gone, and the rumpled old man left behind quietly started the car. 

* * *

_I’m gonna give you a bit of advice here, David. Bury your damage. She doesn’t care._ I _barely have it in me to care, and to be honest, I wish I didn’t. In the end, your goal is to help that woman see justice, so take your baggage out behind the shed and put it where it belongs._

The third morning drew cold and clear, and Rooke tucked his coat tightly about himself. 

He was alone.

The fantasy of snowfall was long gone, though the chill lingered. The police milled about industriously, as much photo-bait as the last bloodstained sheets making their way down the brick path from the front door. The brick pathway remained ignored by the policemen in favor of seesawing from the open coroner’s van to the ajar front door even a moment sooner, while the press of midmorning witnesses hummed in the air. Doors had long opened up and down the street and families in nightgowns stood on lawns as grim-faced officers passed them by. Together it made for a grisly scene, one that told a prettier story than any the papers might’ve fed them. He leaned down as he made his way down the sidewalk, snagging a copy of the paper some jokester paperboy had speared on the steak knife fenceposts dividing willing and unwilling participants of the venue. 

The crime scene tape already showed smudged fingerprints running along the sides, and it sagged in odd places. Self-consciously adjusting his tie, he stepped over the loose tape and strode once more to the home, resolving to start locking the door and windows. 

The place was dreary, quiet and musty, even as people moved to and fro, up and down the stairs one by one, carrying bloody clothes and plastic bags marked ‘Evidence’ in bright curly font. They parted for Rooke as he passed them, each one inscrutable to his eyes. Rooke hurried past them pushing through, until eventually the tide cleared and no one was left to bar his way. He moved towards the third room on the second floor, two away from the bedroom. It still held the same air of quiet contemplation, the weighty sighs he’d breathed lingering, clinging to the corkboard pinned to the far wall. 

The colored twine quivered a bit in the fresh breeze.

Rooke moved further in, stepping quietly despite himself, and lifted the window open. The wind rolled in strongly now, papers fluttering, as Rooke took a moment to savor the fresh breeze. 

Then he shut it. The newspaper was tossed aside, and left forgotten. He turned and focused, sighted the corkboard and its meagre scraps, and went back to work. 

Round and round the twine went as it wound about a pin stuck to _supernatural_. This time, he didn’t have to stop to think. Line after line stretched out, the massive cobweb thorough, yet unsatisfying. Annabeth, killer, means, weapon, result, witnesses, time between crime report and discovery. Anything and everything was culpable. There was no logic to attributing something to the impossible. 

He moodily paced, trying to organize his thoughts, though it was difficult to pierce the haze of his own ego, to his shame. He knew something was up. He knew something was happening, and where, and who, and maybe even how, but in the end it was all goddamn meaningless without a _lead_.

He turned and began circling the whole room, this time paying closer attention to what was already present. 

In reality, there was a great deal. Most of it seemed deeply personal. Multiple shelves lined the walls, most of which behind thick plastic curtains stained to near opacity with smudges and color. Paints lined the walls behind them, some more used than others. 

He followed them along the wall, and came to a corner he’d unconsciously avoided, dominated by a lumpy mass covered over. Reaching down, he seized one edge, lifting the cloth cover up to reveal a stack of paintings, laid atop one another. He tried his best to hurl the opaque plastic aside, coughing as the dust and grit stung. He failed, and ended up simply dragging it off into a corner. 

Returning, he quietly observed the pile left over. 

Paintings. A mound of them, haphazardly stacked, yet delicately separated. None of the canvases were leaning or at an angle. 

Likely, these simply hadn’t been processed yet; if there was one thing not in short supply, it was potential evidence. David narrowed his eyes, interested. These would likely be her failures, unfit even for display or review.

_Look for a new angle. Something that even you can manage. A lead. Anything._

One by one he lifted them up. There were many. 

More than she could have ever hoped to display in this home. 

One after another, he observed them, going down the years. The paintings may have been left forgotten, but she’d certainly put her passion into them, to the point where it became questionable why some of _these_ hadn’t been placed on display instead. There wasn’t actually much in terms of what he would call failure; even the boring ones weren’t _lazy_. In fact, she’d slowly drifted to a more abstract style near the top of the pile.

_Think. Think harder. There’s more to this, there’s always more to this. This was planned, so there has to be a tell somewhere. Annabeth Baxter was a painter and a socialite, but no calls were made and no paintings were sold, for over a month._

On a hunch, he leaned in and smelled one.

_Alcohol_

He recoiled immediately, hissing. He coughed a little, holding it away. It was _fresh_. It could take days for the smell to really fade, depending on the paint used, and these were _new_. He went through more of them, and soon his nose was entirely numb, but his movements only grew more energetic. The top _quarter_ were all like this; aging only really started to show after that. More and more time had clearly passed for the older ones, the visual distinction notable enough to indicate a _significant_ passage of time for some of the samples.

He held one up speculatively - the oldest of the ‘new’ batch. A painting of the downtown, a classic view from one of the rails. It was one she’d done a few more times as well.

Reaching down, he pulled up another one, and held them up.

_Huh._

They weren’t similar, but nearly _identical_.

Made differently, of course, but the perspective, the angle, the colors, all very nearly the same. He leaned them up against the shelves, and sorted through the pile, looking for another.

He found two.

Same as the first.

Some of the colors changed, people vanished between shots, but the angle, buildings, and structures were the same. 

But the style changed. The time of day changed, and - looking more closely at what he assumed to be a newer version, relative to its high position in the pile - it took a more surreal vision. Birds were drawn upside down, people were drawn barefoot with toes like grapefruits, the sun was green and the water was more yellow than blue.

Looking backwards, the surrealist details were consistent, seemingly growing more adventurous. But, he squinted, the fine details grew hazy. A window done with exquisite care was little more than a smudge in the newest iteration.

_Was she copying her own paintings?_

The copies were put aside. Another painting was taken up. A bird in a tree. A tree next door, to be precise. Another, an inverted rooftop across the street. Her neighbors having sex on their patio. The moon at night. Fireworks in the distance. 

Another, with a moments reflection and the window nearby, revealed to be the view outside. And painted, with loving detail, a man in a pale suit, standing in his front yard and staring up and right through the painting. 

He put it down, crouching and running his hands through his hair, hair he hadn’t realized was sweaty.

Annabeth Baxter had locked herself in her own home, and taken to imitating her own art in fits of boredom. Nervous energy bled off the canvases.

He was onto something here, he could feel it. Annabeth had suspected something, maybe? Had she known something might happen?

Could she possibly have known? It certainly seemed obvious in retrospect; a belief that was fallacy in its own right, but it was a solid hunch. She’d, well, not _locked_ , but exiled herself to her home, and likely her family as well. 

One painting still stood out, however.

He went back to the painting of the man in the pale suit. Studied it more carefully. It was one of the most recent, still oily in places, enough that it had certainly held her thoughts. The painting was just as detailed as the rest, save one fact. The man himself.

Annabeth painted landscape. Structures. She clearly picked a spot and put stake down, painting over the course of long periods of time. As a result, people were vague and blurry in her images, flitting in and out of mind. To contrast, buildings were typically as detailed as she could manage, often incorporating details she herself had not seen, but added simply to make them _more_ so. He hadn’t seen one yet, but Rooke would bet money that there was some kind of telescope or high powered camera somewhere in the home. Likely the former, based on her style.

But this man, he was _in_ focus. Her kind of painting would take _days_ to complete, days of staring at the same location, committing every detail to memory. Why was he so clear? 

The man in the painting wore a simple suit with pockets, a heavenly white, as he looked up at the sky with blue eyes and a face that seemed like everyone he’d ever seen come to roost, and yet there was no face to compare with his as he overlooked Annabeth’s window from below.

He traced the man's thin outline, and followed the lines of the painting, up the sidewalk and up the home, to a window where three small smudges sat in the inside hall up against the backdrop of a flower-patterned wall. 

_Father, Mother, child_

Rooke's eyes returned to the man, less than 30, as timeless as when Rooke had seen him not a day ago standing in the same place with company. 

_Who might you be?_

It was a start.


End file.
